The wide adoption by consumers of mobile telephones having video and/or still image capture functionality has resulted in almost everyone being in possession of a digital camera almost all of the time. The ease and convenience with which digital media content can now be produced, stored, and shared, encourages the use of digital photography as the technology of choice for capturing images of friends, family, travel, and special events. However, the very ease and abundance with which digital photographs can now be generated and archived can render that media content incoherent absent a narrative thread or descriptive cues to guide a viewer's attention.
One way of imposing coherence on a collection of digital photographs or other media content is to provide captioning that describes the people, places, or events shown by a digital image, or that enhances the experience of viewing the digital image by providing insightful or humorous commentary. Conventional solutions to providing captioning for media content typically adopt a “one style suits all” approach in which a universal background and a universal text font and/or color are predetermined for use in all cases. However, that conventional approach is at best generic and visually uninteresting, and at worst may be ineffective in producing a clearly legible caption due to lack of contrast between the default background and/or text characters and the image being captioned. Moreover, even when used successfully to provide a legible caption, the conventional approach fails to draw in and engage either the user creating the caption or the viewer of the captioned media content. As a result, the conventional approach to captioning media content can deprive both the user and the viewer of the potential enjoyment derivable from captioning that is aesthetically resonant with the media content it describes.